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A first-person perspective on what it felt like to be without K-12 options By Christina Grattan During a high school rally, my cross country team participated in a dance-off against the volleyball team. I tried my best to dance the moves we rehearsed, but even hours of practice could not make us escape an onslaught of […]
To Any And All State Lawmakers Who Are Willing To Listen: Last August, I attended my very first open schools rally, and it made me want to do more. In October, my Girls Scout sister Olivia committed suicide due to the isolation from school shutdowns. Olivia’s death lit a fire inside me because I knew exactly […]
By Jennifer Wagner CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NEW JOB! YOUR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS PACKAGE INCLUDES… Vacation, sick and flex time. Medical, dental, vision and life insurance. Retirement savings accounts. Tuition or childcare reimbursement. Gym memberships and wellness programs. Relocation assistance. AS WELL AS… On-site hybrid learning space? Employer-funded education savings accounts Tutoring services? Over the past year, work as […]
By Jennifer Wagner After almost five years working in the school choice movement, the subhed on this story about the potential cost of Indiana’s proposed voucher expansion and special needs ESA wasn’t really a surprise: An Indiana House bill could boost by 40% the number of students, many from middle-class families, receiving state subsidies for private […]
By Jennifer Wagner Four decades ago, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman sat down with talk show host Phil Donahue to discuss his bestselling book, Free to Choose. You can watch the interviews here and here. If you don’t have time for the clips, here’s a quick summary: Friedman and Donahue clashed. A lot. Suffice it to say that […]
By Gwen Samuel Dear Dr. Cardona, Congratulations on your nomination to become the next U.S. Secretary of Education. It doesn’t seem so long ago that we were sitting in your office here in Meriden discussing a bullying issue regarding my child. You were so attentive, and while I might not have been happy with all the decisions […]
By Jennifer Wagner The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That tired old cliché is all I can think of as I watch parents right now filing lawsuits to keep schools open or signing petitions asking districts to reverse course on remote learning. They’ve all got […]
By Jennifer Wagner The pandemic has changed schooling as we know it — for now. You can’t throw a stick without hitting an article about how families have been adapting since March. Some are choosing pandemic pods. Others have turned to homeschooling. Many are sending their kids back to the classroom either part-time or full-time. Traditional schools are sounding […]
By Mike McShane As is rarely said at a Sinn Fein meeting, I’d like to say something nice about Protestants. In a new report from the American Enterprise Institute, Albert Cheng, Patrick Wolf, Wendy Wang, and Brad Wilcox look at the family life outcomes of students who attended different types of schools. The report uses nationally representative […]
By Jennifer Wagner Mother Jones recently published a story questioning whether GreatSchools, a national nonprofit that rates public PK-12 schools using test scores and other factors, is inadvertently contributing to neighborhood segregation because families are using the website to find homes near highly rated schools that might not be particularly diverse. GreatSchools partners with a number […]